Golf Course Turf Management: Tools and Techniques

 

As most superintendents can attest, time and money are precious resources in the turf management profession and anything that can save both is widely embraced. That desire is the principal reason behind this offering from experienced American superintendents Wayne Otto and Danny Quast.

Titled ‘Golf Course Turf Management: Tools and Techniques’, the authors proudly claim that this hard-covered book is “written by golf course superintendents for golf course superintendents.” With the express aim of helping their fellow superintendents save time and money while, the book offers advice and solutions that they hope will ultimately enhance the golf course and golf course operations.

As the authors comment in their foreword: “We want to share our experiences and the experiences of fellow superintendents from our past and the present. If we in any way can make your job as golf course superintendents easier or help promote you at your facility we will consider this book a success.

“Golf Course Turf Management: Tools and Techniques is meant to be used as a reference book for problems and situations you will encounter on the golf course. Hopefully [the book] will address you concerns and present you with options…but in the end the final decision is on the shoulders of the superintendent. No one knows your golf course like you do. At best we hope this book will help you make the right decisions.”

Over the course of 520 pages, Otto and Quast, together with help from a number of other course superintendents, cover practically every aspect of golf course maintenance and management from tee to green, maintenance shed to clubhouse. Chapters include the putting green, teeing ground, fairways, roughs, trees, bunkers, marking, cart paths, irrigation and drainage, soil and water testing, fertilising and nutrition, cultivation, weeds, topdressing, best management practices, integrated pest management, plant growth regulators, chemical and pesticide principals, Audubon Cooperative Sanctuary Program for golf courses, communication and budgeting. They pretty much cover it all.

Each chapter is heavily illustrated with colour and black and white photographs and diagrams and also contains a number of so-called ‘Pro Pointers’. These highlighted break-out boxes contain small snippets of advice on certain areas of golf course maintenance, some tricks of the trade which Otto and Quast, who have a combined 80 years’ experience between them, have picked up over the years.